FEATURE STORY: Lucie Arnaz – On Mom, Dad, and the Muse

(This article was first published Sept. 2010 in Long Island Woman magazine.)

“I’ve done television and movies and nightclub acts and national tours of Broadway shows. I’ve raised a family. And throughout it all, I always embraced the relationship with both my folks while I was doing my own thing.”

These could be the triumphant words of anyone who’s made a career in show business without neglecting their heritage. But typical as these sentiments may sound, this time the come from the offspring of a very atypical marriage: Lucie Arnaz, whose parents, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, were both television royalty and creators of one of the most enduring situation comedies of all time. Daunting as that legacy sounds, the actress takes it in stride. “I’ve always told my kids, `This whole thing about your grandparents: it’s real estate. Imagine you had a great piece of property somewhere. You want to take care of it and make sure the right houses are put on it. Don’t cheapen it, and it’ll always stay as valuable as it is.”

Though Lucie and brother Desi Arnaz, Jr., have relegated the administrative nuts and bolts of the Lucy-Desi empire to a licensing company, there are still daily decisions to be made. “It takes a lot of time,” says Lucie, “and I know Desi doesn’t enjoy it too much, so I do most of it. My daughter [Katharine] will likely take over someday, since she seems to be the one who’d care enough to stick with it and take care of it. We might say, `Yes, you can put mom’s face on a purse or a poster. Yes, you can have a Lucy-Desi museum in Jamestown, NY, because she leved there and because they need the business.’ My mother and father’s legacy will stay alive no matter what we do, but it’s good to function as the DesiLu police to make sure the wrong things aren’t done.”

Guarding her parents’ memory, while far from Lucie’s full-time concern, has nonetheless been an ongoing source of pride and exploration. In 1993, she produced the Emmy-winning documentary, Lucy and Desi: A Home Movie, not so much as a gift for fans but as a way of learning about the people who raised her. Recalls Lucie, “I tried to answer, `What was my mother like when she was a kid?’ So I asked my uncle Fred, who was her younger brother, `What did you do when you played? What kind of stuff did you do just for fun?’ Because my mother was not a particularly playful person. I find that hard to believe, considering the I Love Lucy shows, but those were written by four other writers; they were not autobiographies of her life.”

Uncle Fred’s sobering answer caught her off-guard. “`We didn’t play,’ He told her, ‘we worked. My father died before I was born, and my mother had to go away to work. So your mother and I were in charge of the house, the cooking, the animals, the cleaning. We worked 18 hours a day. Weekends, too!’”

That explanation proved a major lightbulb moment for Lucie. “I got it. She wasn’t at home with her mom, because her mom was off making a living. So my mother didn’t have the innate instinct of what it’s like to be sitting and playing mommy-daughter games. And when she grew up, what my mother knew how to do really well was work. When she needed to calm down or feel better or run away from an emotion, she worked. Whether it was at the studio or cleaning silver—she worked. To sit on the carpet and just play with the kids didn’t come naturally. Which was really interesting because I didn’t find it natural, either. So you start to see the cycles, and you think, `Somebody’s gotta throw a monkey wrench in the cycle, or else it’ll go on like that forever.’

“These aren’t hideous, terrible things,” notes Lucie, “but they have to do with bonding and what your children take from you. My kids started to act out kind of weird around four-to-eight. I thought I’d been spending an enormous amount of time with them—way more than my parents were with me. I had a nanny and help, because I was a working actress and my husband [Laurence Luckinbill] is a working actor, too. But I took the kids to the doctors, I drove them to school, I made their dinners—most of the time it was me. But could I say that I was literally only with each of them, alone, for 15 minutes a day? Really focusing on them? What I learned later from a wonderful child psychologist is that’s what children need. Just 15 minutes alone with you every day. That little pay-attention-to-me time. `It makes them feel worthy of love,’ he said, which is the most profound th8ing I’ve heard in a long time. It seems like all the problems in the universe stem from some human being who somehow doesn’t feel worthy of love.”

Admits Lucie, “I think my oldest child got the worst of it because the older they are, the less they’re going to benefit from the changes you make. So my daughter benefited more than my two sons, who are playing a bit of catch-up in their relationships and their ability to know what they want to do with their lives.”

Certainly, Lucie’s own early adulthood had its stutter steps. At 20, she married Phil Vandervort, a young actor who went on to produced documentaries and serve as associate producer of The People’s Court. “It was a ridiculous, stupid thing to do,” sighs Lucie. “He was a lovely man, but I was way too young to make that move. So I extricated myself from a bad mistake and eight years later met Larry [Luckinbill].”

Considering the marriage has lasted nearly 30 years and counting, it was a match made in New York theater rheaven. “Larry and I were both on Broadway at the same time in two different Neil Simon shows. He was starring in Chapter Two; I was in They’re Playing Our Song. We were with mutual friends when we met at Joe Allen’s restaurant. Larry came in to meet the lady who was taking over as the lead in his play because at the time, his wife, Robin Strasser [of One Life to Live witchery fame], was co-starring—and they were getting a divorce! Marilyn Redfield took over, and she was a friend of mine. So, we were having lunch one day, and she said, `Oh, I’ve gotta hang around here because Larry Luckinbill is coming to give me some pointers on the script. You know Larry, don’t you? I told her I didn’t, and she said, `Oh, well, he’s going through this terrible divorce, and he’s so depressed.’

“Seconds after she said that, in he walks. And he was really handsome and smart—and kind of subdued, as one would expect under the circumstances. But I immediately thought, `Boy, he’s so unlike anyone else I’ve ever met.’ I invited him to hang out with this group I put together called `The Matinee Idles.’ It was for people who were by themselves on a Saturday between shows, so they could eat with other show people. Larry joined the group, and we because really great friends for four or five months, and then we started dating. The rest is history; we’ve never looked back.”

Though she’s two years shy of 60, Lucie feels scant trepidation when looking forward to the years ahead. “It’s hard for me to believe I’m anywhere near the age I’m at,” she says. “I look pretty darn good. I feel great, and I’ve never had more fun as a performer than I’m having right now. It’s the old joke: 60 is the new 30. My big concern is that my husband is a tad older than I am, and I just want us to keep on truckin’ for another 15 years.

“I don’t understand the whole Hollywood `get your face done, youth youth youth thing,: she adds.” With television and film, if it’s all you’ve got, and you’re terrified they’re not gonna love you anymore if you don’t take the wattle out of your chin, that’s a horrible way to live. My mother couldn’t have cared less. She wore bigger sunglasses and higher collars, but she didn’t get her face done.” When gently reminded that her mom was photographed through hilariously gauzy filters for her 1974 turn in Mame, Lucie counters, “That’s the friggin’ film business again. I blame my stepfather and the cinematographer—the ones who said, `You gotta make her look like this.’ But as a human being at home with me, she didn’t give me the impression that she had to go under the knife to make sure her face looked a certain way.”

For her part, Lucie chooses exercise and a reasonable diet as her font of youthfulness. “I don’t do a lot of aerobic work anymore,” she confesses. “In 2006, I was in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels on Broadway, and they had shoes made for me with arch supports because they thought it would make it easier to dance, but they popped out my knee, so I had to have a meniscus surgery. It’s fine now, but the knee’s never been quite the same, so the jumping-up-and-down aerobics class doesn’t work well for me anymore. I don’t tap dance like I would normally. But I drive all the way to the city to work out with my friend, Jon Giswold, who’s written two books on fitness. He’s kept me going and in shape, though I have to say I’ve weighed exactly the same for the last 20 years. No matter what I do—if I drink like a sot on New Year’s Eve, or if I starve myself for two days, I’ll go one pound up or one pound down, but my body is what it is. Still, these days, I really pay attention to what goes into my body. I follow Joel Furman’s diet and go by how much nutrition is in the food. There’s nothing I wont’ eat, but I eat more things that are used up in my body quicker.”

It might surprise readers to know that for all her Broadway and TV experience, of late Lucie’s been much more connected to her father’s musical leanings than her mother’s comedic ones. “As a musician and a singer,” explains Lucie, “these (Latin) rhythms have always been very moving to me. It cuts me deep and gets me where I live. After my father died, I found three little cassettes in a plastic case that a fan had sent him. They were recordings of my father’s music live from Ciro’s in Hollywood, taken from radio broadcasts in the 1930s and 40s. It encouraged me to make my own concert and club act.”

This past January at the 92nd Street Y, Lucie served as artistic director for a celebration of Latin Music as seen through the tunes and arrangements of the Desi Arnaz Orchestra. “We did five performances of The Big Babalu Show, featuring Valarie Pettiford, who’s a jazzy, velvet-throated singer and an amazing dancer; Raul Esparza, the finest leading man on Broadway today—who just happens to be Cuban, too—and me. One night, my brother Desi came in and played percussion, which is a rare event because he doesn’t like to travel around and do that stuff. We got an awful lot of comments afterwards about, `When are you going to do it again? Can you travel with it?’ We’re trying to do another limited run in New York, but it’s hard to find the right-size stage, so we might tour it to Florida first.”

A studio CD of the material, “Latin Roots,” was released Feb. 9 and even features a song, “The Music in Your Heart,” composed by Joe Luckinbill. “My son, Joe, has a band in L.A.,” says Lucie. “He’s on his way, but he’s struggling. Musicians—oy!—how do they make it? But he sent me a tune that I loved, and I ended up writing the lyric. It was so much fun to do the song together. It ended up being about the muse in you. In this particular case, it could be his grandfather and his musical ability; it could be me when I’m not around, it could be himself or his own heart, or how you’re never alone because that path is always in your heart. `I’m in the air you breathe in…I’m always gonna be with you.’ It’s a very good sentiment, and I like the song a lot.”

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FUN FACTS ABOUT LUCY, LUCIE, & LARRY

* On I Love Lucy, though Lucille Ball’s pregnancy coincided with Lucy Ricardo’s, Little Ricky was not played by Desi Arnaz, Jr., but by Keith Thibodeaux.

* In her 1985 sitcom, The Lucie Arnaz Show, Lucie played a radio therapist—at just the time Frasier Crane was starting to appear on Cheers (although Frasier wouldn’t trade his couch for a microphone until 1993).

* In 2006, Lucie and daughter Kate co-starred in the last play produced (to date) at Florida’s Beleaguered Coconut Grove Playhouse, Sonia Flew. “As a matter of fact, the marquee was up for a year after that,” recalls Lucie.

* The Arnazes no longer own I Love Lucy or DesiLu. In 1953, Lucy and Desi sold CBS the rights to their sitcom so they could buy RKO Studios and create DesiLu. After Desi died, Lucy sold DesiLu to Gulf+Western, which is now Paramount and also part of CBS. The Arnazes do still own Here’s Lucy, which is currently being released on DVD.

* Lucie’s daughter Kate is named for Katharine Hepburn (same spelling). The day Kate was born, Hepburn sent this note: “I’m so honored to be a member of your family, but poor girl! That `A!’ At least it’ll teach her to fight.” ▲